South Lanarkshire Council has retained the Investors in People (IiP) Standard for the Council as a whole. The Council first achieved council wide recognition in August 2003. It is one of four Scottish Local authorities to achieve to corporate accreditation.
Working to the IiP standard is one of the drivers of continuous improvement in the Council. IiP accreditation provides evidence for Customer Service Excellence (formerly Charter Mark) and helps the Council achieve good outcomes in Best Value, HMIe inspections and other external awards such as the Care Awards.
The benefits of using the IiP standard described by employees during the recent assessment included:
- It has helped the Council to see that improvement affects the services provided in the community.
- It has created consistency of practice across Services and Resources by giving the Council a structure for planning and managing employees. This has resulted in bringing up the base line of performance.
- Employees have more awareness of how their team objectives feed into the service plan and the Council Plan Connect.
- The culture of the organisation has evolved. Employees are now encouraged to contribute ideas to improve their team and to be open and honest about things that are and are not working well in their team or role.
Chief Executive Archie Strang is delighted with the feedback from the assessment: "The fact the Council has successfully retained IiP accreditation is due the hard work of everyone in the Council. The holistic approach of the IiP principles of Plan, Do and Review have helped the Council structure its people policies to ensure we are maximizing the potential of our most important asset, our employees, in a structured and cost effective way to meet our business need."
